databinding expression in asp.net

Question

Hi All,

I have an VS2005 ASP.Net page with a repeater on it of Customers.

The following shows up in the of the repeater:

<span><%# Eval(GetAdLinks((Customer)Container.DataItem)) %></span>

The GetAdLinks is a protected mehtod in the code behind which returns a control represented as a string. Is this possible?

I'm getting an error that says Customer does not contain a property with the name ...

Any ideas?

thanks, rod.

Answer 1

If it's a client-side (no runat="server") control, then it should be possible. But you should not include it in an Eval(). I'm guessing it should look somewhat like this:

<%# GetAdLinks(Container.DataItem) %>

The GetAdLinks method should be refactored to accept the Container.DataItem as a DataRowView object. Inside the method, you can cast it to a Customer object, which you can figure out with a little debugging.

Good luck!

Answer 2

The better wayu to do this would be to add a Literal to your Repeater template and then implement the OnDataBinding method. This is exactly what a Literal is for.

Here is an example:

<asp:Literal ID="litYourControl" runat="server" OnDataBinding="litYourControl_DataBinding" />

Then in your codebehind implement it:

protected void litYourControl(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    Literal lt = (Literal)(sender);
    // Not sure what field you are binding to based on the example in your question
    // so I will just make an assumption.
    Customer cus = (Customer)(Eval("Container.DataItem"));
    lt.Text = GetAdLinks(cus);
}